Odeneho Kwaku Appiah used the NPP’s national delegates conference in Kumasi to accuse the Mahama government of using the courts against opponents.
The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Odeneho Kwaku Appiah, widely known as COKA, has described the imprisonment of his predecessor Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly called Wontumi, as politically driven.
Speaking at the NPP National Delegates Conference at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi, COKA told party members plainly: "Wontumi is a political prisoner." The remark drew cheers from the crowd, Daily Guide Network reported.
The accusation
COKA argued that the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by President John Dramani Mahama, is leaning on the judiciary to go after its political rivals, and that Wontumi is one of those caught in it.
He said he had visited the former regional chairman in prison recently. By his account, Wontumi remained in good spirits despite the conditions and was still committed to the party's fortunes.
The source report does not set out the charges or the case under which Wontumi is being held, and it carries no response from the government, the NDC or the judiciary to COKA's claims. Readers should treat the allegation as the position of one party officer until the other side is heard.
A rallying call for 2028
Most of COKA's address was aimed at mobilising the party base. He urged members to work towards removing the NDC from office at the 2028 presidential and parliamentary elections, framing an NPP win as the only way to change the country's direction.
He said the party had taken hard lessons from its defeat in the 2024 general election and was now focused on returning to power. The Ashanti Region, long the NPP's strongest voting bloc, would lead that effort, he said.
COKA also pressed delegates to set aside internal quarrels. "Let's put aside our personal differences and unite and work for the NPP henceforth," he said.
He went further and named a candidate, declaring that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia would be the country's next president and that nothing could stop the NDC from losing in 2028.
Why it matters
For Ghanaians following politics from the United States and elsewhere, two things stand out here. The first is that the NPP's internal rebuilding after 2024 is now being conducted in public, at a national conference, with the Ashanti Region positioning itself as the engine of any comeback.
The second is the language. Calling a jailed party figure a political prisoner raises the temperature of an already tense argument about whether prosecutions since the change of government are about accountability or about politics. That dispute is likely to shape the next three years of campaigning.
